in reply to Portable way to extract string from a binary

C:\>perl -ne "print $1,$/ while m/([\w ]{2,})/gc" myscript.exe
MZ
This program cannot be run in DOS mode
efx
Rich
PE
RES
text
rdata
data
C:\>

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Add whatever you want to the character class according to your definition of a string :-)

cheers

tachyon

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Re^2: Portable way to extract string from a binary (strings.pl)
by tye (Sage) on Jul 14, 2004 at 16:44 UTC

    To match strings(1) as I'm used to, you'd want something like: 

    my( $min, $max ) = ( 4, 32*1024 );
local( $/ ) = \(32*1024);
my $prev = '';
while( <> ) {
    $prev .= $_;
    while( $prev =~ /([\n\t -~]{$min,$max})\0/g ) {
        print "$1\n";
    }
    $prev =~ s/.*\0//s;
}

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    Though I notice that strings(1) on FreeBSD replaces the "followed by '\0'" with "followed by an unprintable character", which my testing finds to be a disadvantage (at least it should be made optional).

    - tye        

[reply]
[d/l]

      Hmm, while I take your point about looking for null termination the code you present does not work for me. The first issue is this: 

      C:\>strings.pl myscript.exe
Quantifier in {,} bigger than 32766 before HERE mark in regex m/([\n\t
+ -~]{ << HERE 4,32768})\0/

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